Alibaba, Cisco, Dell EMC, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise,
Huawei, Intel Corporation and Microsoft today announced the formation of
a new industry standard group dedicated to advancing Compute Express
Link (CXL), a new high-speed CPU-to-Device and CPU-to-Memory
interconnect designed to accelerate next-generation data center
performance. The group of companies also ratified the CXL Specification
1.0, an open industry standard that delivers breakthrough performance
for emerging usage models while supporting an open ecosystem for data
center accelerators and other high-speed enhancements.

CXL Specification 1.0 Available Now

The CXL Specification 1.0 enables a high-speed, efficient interconnect
between the CPU and platform enhancements and workload accelerators,
such as GPUs, FPGAs and other purpose-built accelerator solutions. The
technology is built upon the well-established PCI Express® (PCIe®)
infrastructure, leveraging the PCIe 5.0 physical and electrical
interface to provide advanced protocol in three key areas:

1. I/O Protocol

2. Memory Protocol, initially allowing a host to share memory with an
accelerator

3. Coherency Interface

CXL technology maintains memory coherency between the CPU memory space
and memory on attached devices, which allows resource sharing for higher
performance, reduced software stack complexity, and lower overall system
cost. This permits users to simply focus on target workloads as opposed
to the redundant memory management hardware in their accelerators. CXL
was designed to be an industry open standard interface for high-speed
communications, as accelerators are increasingly used to complement CPUs
in support of emerging applications such as Artificial Intelligence and
Machine Learning. The specification is available to companies that join
the CXL Consortium.

Join CXL Industry Leaders

The founding promoter companies represent a wide-range of industry
expertise and include leading Cloud Service Providers, Communications
OEMs and System OEMs. The group is in the process of incorporation as an
open standard body. Furthermore, efforts are now underway to create
innovative usages that leverage CXL technology as well as develop CXL
Specification 2.0 to further the standard’s technical features and
capabilities. For information on how to get involved, contact admin@computeexpresslink.org.

About Compute Express Link

Compute Express Link (CXL) is a high-speed CPU interconnect technology
that accelerates next generation data center performance. Alibaba,
Cisco, Dell EMC, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei,
Intel Corporation and Microsoft are forming an open industry standard
group to develop technical specifications that facilitate breakthrough
performance for emerging usage models while supporting an open ecosystem
for data center accelerators and other high-speed enhancements. For more
information on the CXL Consortium, please visit www.computeexpresslink.org.

# # #

PCI-SIG, PCI Express, and PCIe are registered trademarks of PCI-SIG.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CXL Promoter Statements of Support

Alibaba

“Alibaba is glad to support the global development and open
collaboration of the CXL ecosystem. As a technology innovator on cloud
infrastructure and computing, we hope to drive the development of CXL
together with other industry leading players, delivering more tangible
benefits to our customers and the community at large.”

“Dell EMC is delighted to be part of the CXL Consortium and its all-star
cast of promoter companies. We are encouraged to see the true openness
of CXL, and look forward to more industry players joining this effort.
The synergy between CXL and Gen-Z is clear, and both will be important
components in supporting Dell EMC’s kinetic infrastructure and this data
era.”

“Facebook is excited to join CXL as a founding member to enable and
foster a standards-based open accelerator ecosystem for efficient and
advanced next generation systems.”

Vijay Rao, Director of Technology and Strategy, Facebook

Google

“Google supports the open Compute Express Link collaboration. Our
customers will benefit from the rich ecosystem that CXL will enable for
accelerators, memory, and storage technologies.”

Rob Sprinkle, Technical Lead, Platforms Infrastructure, Google LLC

HPE

“At HPE we believe that being able to compose compute resources over
open interfaces is critical if our industry is to keep pace with the
demands of a data and AI-driven future. We applaud Intel for opening up
the interface to the processor. CXL will help customers utilize
accelerators more efficiently and dovetails well with the open Gen-Z
memory-semantic interconnect standard to aid in building
fully-composable, workload-optimized systems.”

Mark Potter, HPE CTO and Director of Hewlett Packard Labs

Huawei

“Being a leading provider in the industry, Huawei will play an important
role in the contribution of technology specification. Huawei’s
intelligent computing products which incorporates Huawei’s chip,
acceleration components and intelligent management together with
innovative optimized system design, can deliver end-to-end solutions
which significantly improves the rollout and system efficiency of data
centers.”

Zhang Xiaohua, GM of Huawei’s Intelligent Computing BU

Intel

“CXL is an important milestone for data-centric computing, and will be a
foundational standard for an open, dynamic accelerator ecosystem. Like
USB and PCI Express, which Intel also co-founded, we can look forward to
a new wave of industry innovation and customer value delivered through
the CXL standard.”

Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation

Microsoft

“Microsoft is joining the CXL consortium to drive the development of new
industry bus standards to enable future generations of cloud servers.
Microsoft strongly believes in industry collaboration to drive
breakthrough innovation. We look forward to combining efforts of the
consortium with our own accelerated hardware achievements to advance
emerging workloads from deep learning to high performance computing for
the benefit of our customers.”

Dr. Leendert van Doorn, Distinguished Engineer, Azure, Microsoft

Industry Statement of Support

Gen-Z Consortium

“As a Consortium founded to encourage an open ecosystem for the
next-generation memory and compute architectures, Gen-Z welcomes Compute
Express Link (CXL) to the industry and we look forward to opportunities
for future collaboration between our organizations.”